Three Single Major Factors
by DarkBluexx
Summary: Just a few separate levels of existence, humanity or what have you, all categorized into one defining equation. Three parts featuring Harry, Draco and Tom.
1. Chapter 1

_"Of house-elves and children's tales, of love, loyalty, and innocence, Voldemort knows and understands nothing."  
_-Albus Dumbledore

-1-

"…And wait for it to all turn up….It always does in the end."

It was just one thing Luna had said among a list of others that evening that made Harry wish naivety could be a socially acceptable conduct. Because conviction was _hard_ with the fibers of civilization tugging apart compositions like the Quibbler. Some called it nitwitted delusion. Harry thought nitwittery was fine if he could sleep at night. Even so, reality was so adamant and biding time grew too long. To believe absolutely that he would see Sirius again, even to see it printed in black letter heads in a half reliable magazine, even if it wasn't under the moniker of an obscure rock band. He couldn't be convinced any lone testament was enough; that anything was with him still gone.

Even if the wait wore thin, what with his fifty-fifty chances of dying now. The odds roused an already resonant warning, an intolerable buzz. Harry watched the little charcoal structures sink into themselves in the thriving orange blaze of just warm enough warmth, mulling over an abundance of mulling on his part. Education of loss was not a course warranting do-overs; demands for experience should have been reserved for spellcasting alone. Missing just became an unwelcome norm.

The small things, a sock's mate, a dropped quill—and Hermione always dropped a spare of those, what with all her spares and such—those things didn't turn up again. Never a case of happy reunions. And the considerable things just called for larger amounts of optimism he couldn't afford to invest in. Sirius once promised he could live with him; offered it as humble gesture. As if Harry would say no to his father's best mate, as if there was anything he wanted more than to see that offer upheld. The summer spent in the Black family house hadn't been home like the pair would have asked; not what they'd intended, not in the dusty thresholds and creaky beams claimed by a family Sirius was only a part by name. Harry had hoped. They'd both hoped. It only got them alone.

Sirius promised things. Harry had no particular aversion to long waits. It was easy to set expectations but too much to expect this just to be the end, or an end at all.

Dumbledore always spoke so high and mighty of some strength he said Harry had; it had never been a backbreaking power or formidable tactic. He determined it had something to do with will and what he willed to bring along and what he left behind. It was never so tangible as it seemed then, never so much like a suitcase. He could pick it up, pack it full and carry on if he so wished or leave it back and quit feeling weighty things. The option was never so plain. He could live without Dumbledore's catch all solution to life and quit expecting to see gaunt, yet thriving expressions whenever he thought he should or particularly wanted to see his old friend in thresholds and Quidditch stands.

It was a choice. For a second barely half gone, the certain side had potency and it had sprawling limbs and roots extending, growing, ever stretching and pointing all the places he could go with them. A short-lived stalk because Harry had already chosen, already got that there was no hesitating on some destitute alternative because he knew to live and let love. Exactly how, exactly when, exactly what to do—the details were just filler. Things of sizable caliber showed up when you quit asking; they never needed fishing.

The fire licked at ashy broiled interiors of the fireplace. Harry didn't need to see to know it was warm. Like so many things, it was there. He would let that count for something as he was never really alone. It came back to this always, to love, which was never a sacrifice.

--

AN: This is my first shot at HP and I apologize for the plotlessness. I'm don't usually write drabbles but hopefully this wasn't too blah. The next two are still being revised, but should be up soon-ish.


	2. Chapter 2

_"He cannot kill you if you are already dead."_  
-Albus Dumbledore

-2-

He returned in the morning to a hall that wasn't a hall. Unrecognizable, he knew the word was inadequate. The approaching noon revealed deserted floorboards and without people, a hall wasn't a home and it didn't have tables or banners or false sky-scapes. The last place they wanted to be, maybe, under fake stars; maybe there were other places they could sleep. The bluer, lighter effigy didn't burn like the flashes behind his eyes, just licked at gleaming walls. Draco's eyes hadn't shut since he'd seen everything important, good and cruel in the comparably small room. The restless twitch and definitive wrongness of sitting still had dispersed when it ended and he wouldn't have to do anything anymore for any side or any mark. Killing could be taken lightly, but in the hands of another it was one thing; in his own un-calloused creaseless palm it was another.

An odd offhand memory of sleeping bags turned now to stretchers; they'd both seen that floor, the very one that still soaked up remnants of red through shiny varnish. They'd moved everyone already. Draco had never known fatigue before that room, that state. He stood still, rigidity the only gesture left to screen instability. No sneers or scowls or shoving of furniture. Nothing so remotely damaging added dent or scratch to established ruins.

It wasn't worth it. A singed corner of robes rustled about his feet, a sign that he'd already left enough dents and bruises behind. As if he needed reminders.

Blurred strips of space and time taught him all those basic things, distinguished those categories of right and wrong that can hardly even categorize themselves as basic. It had frustrated him before. Now he just thought it should have been obvious.

His father should have seen it coming and should never have dived in head first to meet a brand of high-risk nobility he couldn't clear of dispersed inflictions that weren't quite his to gamble with. His son, his wife. Family. That meant something to some people. But Lucius had ambitions to kill for things he believed in; Draco knew this and Draco for the first time in his life wished Lucius Malfoy was anyone else's dad.

Sitting still at Slytherin's head, he was glad the Great Hall was empty now, the table his, as if there was ever a time in his seven years that it wasn't. His roots were irrefutably in the table, comfortable roots shaped like sturdy wooden legs that gravity held down to floorboards unless magic folded them away. The surface didn't feel clean in the dawning where he sat, there at the end. His sore cuts and stains, crusted deep in fingernails from efforts whether attempted, forced or accidental, residing there in shaking hands—that gave up showing any fake signs of strength—where it wouldn't wash away. It wasn't really guilt, just filth that had nothing to do with the kind he claimed ran in veins. Deaf to a table's spectral voices, birth and ancient bloodlines were irrelevant there. It was just a longing to feel cleaner and free of the tarnish.

Draco never envied the not-quite-man like his father had. He feared it in its prime; honored it in its decline. Only a limp fold of robes now, and Draco saw him for what he was. Killing threats led to killing acts and none of it would have happened if he had taken Dumbledore up on his offer the night of the tower. Now he saw which acts were the noble ones. At least the living ones had that to back them.

Cowardice, he realized. It had a name, a reason. And whom he owed for his life wouldn't have to worry about accusations of that.

It mattered little there at his close. Schoolmates, friend or fiend, whichever cause or reason, weren't meant to be killed and they weren't contrived to kill.

But killing was what it always came back to, even at an ending.


	3. Chapter 3

_"To the well organized mind, death is but the next great adventure."  
_-Albus Dumbledore

-3-

Prototype pupil. Carved into their master-crafted stonewalls and gray corridors, where ideas wrote themselves in the blanks if one stared long enough. They depicted his memorial because he wasn't about to be forgotten. Books snapped and hissed outside their shelves where dark magic had given them humanistic potential; he understood the deceased masters' intentions. However, only he would take it the whole length because the restricted section after dark held no consequences. Not with that grin and wink that fooled them by the dozen, the success and virtue muddled with a sad story that enticed so well. It wasn't so hard to persuade an already convinced crowd. They liked Tom Riddle; they knew it.

He could have went on such cunning alone, but an extra charm, the manipulative kind, assured a fully smothered risk factor.

Clipped lines and phrases and a single word glowing in his subconscious that only the blimp, Slughorn had said aloud; there was nothing, really. But he took it, claiming it to his name as none would ever elicit into their own happy lines, especially preceding his. It just wasn't done, like some silly folkway humanity was too feathery to step on. His steady treads happened to be a fortunate forte.

Chronological order played its part dutifully with his inner proclamations of firsts that the library had proved—there was nothing said about sevenths. The still unseasoned mind could take value in firsts, but he knew it was bigger than that—youth was ambitious as well. And here was his home; it gave him everything he'd ever wanted like some magic fairytale ending ripped out of books he remembered taking out of stubby fingers, only it taught him real things, not myths, showed him pretentious accomplishes in extended futures. A brand of genius so unknown to all but these walls, the only place, thing and being he ever loved that paid him back incessantly—never because it owed him a thing but these walls knew. They knew he was a gold star deserving of that just-right equation configuration.

This was a legend growing within that of a starting ground of legends before and to come: a legend in itself. He had scorned them once for not discerning it, but where they were blind, they would miss the tremendous resource he milked.

The filth, the pure and the in between alike, equally menial as long as they couldn't see these principles. Maybe when he showed them in the end, they would understand before they fell and he would stand so tall. No split shares or joint settlements to reap any lasting benefits of the sacrifices and undertakings. It would all be his in time. These walls would stand on and on.

So there was the first laid out like a gem—a brilliant mound of multiplying fortune behind his eyes but bright enough to blind and beat. For him it was to claim and to touch it was the hardest step; it was nothing at all for him. The game would end and acts of meaning would fall into place in little even bordered portions all connected by the edges.

For Tom Riddle, these things were composed of sights, for the self deemed lord saw what they missed.

In the end, only one other would watch once more, maybe in silence at what he couldn't "fix." Dumbledore was only a master of his own time. The rest would find their close in his eyes if they were lucky—an ending at his hands would be an honor. Those eyes would yield to his.

Tom Riddle slid the book inside his robes, distinguishing the lantern light and skirting the bookshelves one by one in the safe dingy cover.

He would not fall the same as them. He wouldn't fall at all.

Because for Lord Voldemort, it always came back to dying.

* * *

**A/N: **I'm thinking this one was a little confusing. :/ I guess that's just the result of trying to break down the complexity of a psychopath. Fun!


End file.
